Assassin's Quest

She offered me three golds without hesitation. That was more than caravan fare; I could have bought a horse, a good horse, and not only joined a caravan but traveled in comfort on that. Instead I left her shop before she would try to dissuade me with a higher offer. With a copper I bought a loaf of coarse bread and sat down to eat it near the docks. I wondered a great many things. The earring had probably been Burrich's grandmother's. He had mentioned she had been a slave but had won free of that life. I wondered what the earring had come to mean to him, that he had given it to my father, and what it had meant to my father that he had kept it. Had Patience known any of this when she had passed it on to me?

I am human. I tempted myself with her offer of golds. I reflected that if Burrich knew of my situation, he would tell me to go ahead and sell it, that my life and safety were worth more to him than an earring of silver and sapphire. I could get a horse and go to the Mountains and find Verity and put an end to the constant nagging of his Skill-order that was like an itch I could not scratch.

I stared out over the river and finally confronted the enormous journey before me. From here I must journey through near desert to get to Blue Lake. I had no idea how I would cross Blue Lake itself. On the other side, forest trails wound through the foothills up into the rugged lands of the Mountain Kingdom. To Jhaampe the capital city I must go, to somehow obtain a copy of the map Verity had used. It had been based on old writings in the Jhaampe library; perhaps the original was still there. Only it could lead me to Verity somewhere in the unknown territory beyond the Mountain Kingdom. I would need every coin, every resource I could command.

But despite all that, I decided to keep the earring. Not for what it meant to Burrich, but what it had come to mean to me. It was my last physical link to my past, to who I had been, to the man who had raised me, even to the father who had once worn it. It was oddly difficult to bring myself to do what I knew was wise. I reached up and undid the tiny catch that secured the earring to my ear. I still had the scraps of silk from my masquerade, and I used the smallest one to wrap the earring well and put it inside my belt pouch. The trader woman had been too interested in it and marked its appearance too well. If Regal did decide to send seekers after me, that earring would be one of the ways I'd be described.

Afterward I walked about the city, listening to folk talk and trying to learn what I needed to know without asking questions. I loitered in the marketplace, wandering from stall to stall idly. I allotted myself the lavish sum of four coppers, and spent them on what seemed exotic luxuries: a small bag of tea herbs, dried fruit, a piece of looking glass, a small cooking pot, and a cup. I asked at several herb stalls for elfbark, but either they did not know it or they knew it by another name in Farrow. I told myself it was all right, for I did not expect to have any need for its restorative powers. I hoped I was right. Instead I dubiously purchased something called sunskirt seeds, which I was assured would revive a man to wakefulness no matter how weary he might be.

I found a rag woman who let me go through her cart for two more coppers. I found a smelly but serviceable cloak and some leggings that promised to be as itchy as they were warm. I traded her my remaining scraps of yellow silk for a head kerchief, and with many leering remarks she showed me how to tie it about my head. I did as I had done before, making the cloak into a bundle to carry my things, and then went down to the slaughter yards east of town.

I had never encountered such a stench as I found there. There was pen after pen after pen of animals, veritable mountains of manure, the smell of blood and offal from the slaughter sheds, and the harsh stinks of the tannery pits. As if the assault on my nose was not enough, the air was likewise filled with the bawling of cattle, the squealing of haragars, the buzzing of the blowflies, and the shouts of the folk moving the animals from pen to pen or dragging them off to slaughter. Steel myself as I would, I could not insulate myself from the blind misery and panic of the waiting animals. They had no clear knowledge of what awaited them, but the smell of the fresh blood and the cries of the other beasts awoke in some of them a terror equivalent to what I had felt as I sprawled on the dungeon floor. Yet here I must be, for this was where the caravans ended, and also where some began. Folk who had driven animals here to sell would most likely be returning. Most would be buying other trade goods to take back with them, so as not to waste a trip. I had hopes of finding some sort of work with one of them that would gain me the companionship of a caravan at least as far as Blue Lake.